Good news for marketers: All the new ways to connect online are giving you even more opportunities to reach customers.
Tapping into these new touchpoints, however, can be a headache if you’re using manual bidding for your online advertising. You’d have to adjust your bids to match every single customer’s unique mix of signals, like what time they’re online, their device, their browser, their language, and so on.
That’s extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, for a human to do. That’s why many marketers are turning to automated bidding tools, like Smart Bidding from Google Ads. These tools use machine learning to quickly analyze millions of signals and proactively set real-time, auction-level adjustments.
While this technology is powerful, it still needs proper inputs. Put another way, you’re the brains behind the machine. Smart Bidding is “smart,” but it can get even more intelligent when you empower it with the right strategies.
Let’s look at three steps you can take to make automated bidding tools work harder for you.
3 steps to make automated bidding tools work harder for you
Step 1: Choose the right bid strategy
Set up conversion tracking and then think about what you’re trying to achieve. Is it increasing conversions, decreasing cost per acquisition (CPA), getting a specific return on ad spend (ROAS), or something else? Once you’ve defined your goal, pick the right bidding strategy to reach it. There are a variety of Smart Bidding strategies you can choose from. Maximize Conversions, for example, lets you get as many conversions as possible within a certain budget. But let’s explore how two companies used two other strategies.
If you don’t have budget constraints, you might consider the Target CPA strategy. Skechers, for example, faced an increasingly competitive footwear environment in Spain and needed to not only boost sales but raise brand recognition. The Target CPA strategy let the team define a bid amount that would achieve the highest number of conversions at a specific CPA. According to Skechers, this increased their conversions by 214%. – Read more
